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Yes, it is a consequence of economic and lifestyle changes that many traditional industrial and manufacturing processes have been lost in this country.

Lost, as in naturally declined through being unviable or where, if they are based around natural resources, raw materials have been depleted.

Other trademark and household name companies have relocated to other parts of the globe where labour costs are less or their products and services are no longer in demand.

Amongst the giant conglomerates that have gone this way are coal mining, steel making, ship building, car assembly lines and many more.

On a more local rather than a regional level there has been the decimation of our High Streets as retailers have been burdoned by rents, rates and an inability to compete with on-line retailers who, rather than having multiple shops just tend to have a mega warehouse, an automated packing system and a fleet of vans and lorries for distribution.

Yes, it can be seen as a fundamental shift in demand, a root and branch change in our own shopping habits and the rise to dominance of algorithms, artificial intelligence and a certain gullibility on our own part in being duped by said technology as to what we should buy and how much we should be prepared to pay for it.

I can accept a lot of the foregoing as progress but the one thing that I do not seem to have seen in recent years, and therefore I fear is a casualty of the relentless drive for impersonal service is the job of the newsagency paper delivery boy or girl.

I have a special affinity to this form of employment in that I was, for a few years, a paper boy.

I am not actually sure if I can use that gender specific title even retrospectively nowadays. Perhaps it should be manual media distributor, print transfer operative, mobile disseminator of information or letter box jockey.

In my youth, and I am talking about the 1970's, doing a paper round was a means of earning a bit of extra pocket money. There were of course multiple opportunities to earn a bit of extra cash in that decade with many of my friends doing shop work, casual farm labouring, helping in the family business or even working in hazardous and potentially dangerous environments, the sort of situations that would just not be legal today.

One friend did packing in a spice warehouse and would regularly turn up at school with a distinct turmeric stained hue to his visible body parts.

I cannot recall how I got my first paper round but the usual route would be taking over the delivery list of someone you knew, in answering a window card advertisement in the newsagency window or just being confident and asking at the shop counter if any jobs were available.

I started in the spring of, it must have been, 1976.

I used my bike, a blue and rather boring Raleigh Wayfarer, with full mudguards, a dynamo for dark mornings and a big saddle bag with a reflective sticker on it saying "Small Vehicle".

After collecting a worryingly heavy linen sack, branded with The Sun and Daily Mirror logos I followed a typed out list of addresses or at least until I had learnt it back to front.

My round was on the western side of the small town in which we lived with well to do and tidy terraced streets and a new housing estate amongst the clients of the newsagency.

It was a monday to friday routine with the usual daily papers having been shipped in by lorry or train during the early hours from London and dumped by van on the forecourt of the shop before being sorted by the retailer into the different rounds.

I was just one of half a dozen or so youths who were intent of supplementing their meagre incomes although we would rarely acknowledge each other in the shop or out on the streets. Because I lived on what was perceived as the better side of the town and had just started Grammar School I was seen as a bit of a posh kid and was largely ignored for that.

Wet and cold starts in those first weeks were horrible but gradually as I got used to the whole mini-industrial process and the spring weather turned to summer I found it enjoyable and rewarding in many more ways than just financial.

I should say here that my weekly wage was about £2.50 and that soon disappeared with my sherbert fountain addiction and through a subscription to Speed and Power Magazine.

The physical effort improved my overall fitness particularly as it involved rapid cycling, equally speedy dismounts and more of the same on a stop start basis for an hour or so each day.

The bike did not fare so well and the pedal crank on the scooting side soon bent out of shape and eventually gave in to metal fatigue.

My stint as a paper boy was curtailed by pressures of education but I did return to the honourable vocation in my late teens with a sunday morning round that was more like a small business in that I bought the bulky broadsheets wholesale and then sold them at the retail price.

I learned a lot from the experience and it really set me up for challenges in my adult years by teaching me self reliance and a strong work ethic which have served me well.

I can see that increased traffic, safeguarding issues, childhood obesity and a dramatic decline in printed news have contributed to the demise of the paper boy and girl but I am sad that the job seems to have gone the way of many other traditional forms of work.